This Christmas

A typical domestic dramedy full of trivial arguments and predictable reconciliations, This Christmas offers one exceptional moment: Chris Brown performing "Try a Little Tenderness" in a club. As soon as Ma' Dere's youngest son steps on stage, murmuring that he's nervous because it's his "first time," it hardly matters what anyone else is doing. He begins to sing, and he's brilliant. He also brings Preston Whitmore's movie to a halt. Some awkward, unnecessary cuts to reaction shots emphasize that Michael's brothers and sisters are astonished, but this one scene is only a drop in the film's large, conventional bucket full of familial deceits and resentments.

While the film makes familial grappling look mostly comic, occasional tensions erupt into full-on fights (Lisa and Kelli go at it on the front lawn, and Lisa finds a particularly physical way to punish Malcolm). Broad and farcical, such moments are less engaging than the film's subtler moments, and mostly just repeat the home-for-the-holidays movie formula. This formula is exactly why Brown's non-Christmas ballad song, so soulful and sweet, feels so refreshing.